Professor Gary Amy will become KAUST's first Emeritus Professor on July 1, 2014, after serving as a founding faculty member and director of the Water Desalination and Reuse Center (WDRC). Professor TorOve Leiknes has been named Interim Director of the WDRC, effective June 15, 2014, bringing expertise in membrane technology and wastewater treatment. Leiknes's international network will support the WDRC's global presence in water research. Why it matters: This transition highlights KAUST's ongoing commitment to water research and leadership in sustainable technologies.
KAUST held its 2014 Faculty Recognition Dinner to celebrate faculty achievements, promotions, and welcome new members. President Jean-Lou Chameau highlighted the university's research output and its standing among science and engineering institutions. Over a dozen new faculty members were welcomed, and both established and new faculty were encouraged to engage in cross-disciplinary conversations. Why it matters: Such events can foster collaboration and innovation, enhancing KAUST's research capabilities and reputation within the region and globally.
KAUST welcomes five new faculty members for the new school year: Andrea Falqui, Daniele Daffonchio, Athanasios Tzavaras, Ying Sun, and Carlo Liberale. The new faculty members come from diverse backgrounds and bring expertise in areas such as bioscience, microbial ecology, and nanostructure imaging. They will contribute to KAUST's vision through research, teaching, and collaboration. Why it matters: The addition of new faculty enhances KAUST's research capabilities and educational offerings, fostering innovation and attracting top talent to the region.
Mo Li, an assistant professor of bioscience, is featured in a faculty focus article by KAUST. The article appears on the university's Biological and Environmental Science and Engineering Division page. Why it matters: This highlights KAUST's ongoing efforts to showcase faculty expertise and research areas within the university.
MBZUAI faculty Alham Fikri Aji, Timothy Baldwin, and Fajri Koto won an Outstanding Paper Award at EACL 2023 for their paper "NusaX: Multilingual Parallel Sentiment Dataset for 10 Indonesian Local Languages." The paper introduces the first parallel resource for 10 Indonesian low-resource languages to boost performance in sentiment analysis and machine translation. The dataset is available on HuggingFace. Why it matters: This work highlights MBZUAI's commitment to advancing NLP research in low-resource languages, which can help preserve linguistic diversity and improve access to digital resources for speakers of underrepresented languages.
MBZUAI recognized seven faculty members for outstanding contributions in research, teaching, and mentorship at its annual Faculty Recognition and Welcome Reception. Associate Professor Salman Khan received the Distinguished Research Award for his work on multimodal models for remote Earth observation, including projects like AI4Weather and the AI Global Agriculture Advisory. Assistant Professor Alham Fikri Aji received the Early Career Researcher Award for his contributions to low-resource NLP and international collaborations. Why it matters: The awards highlight MBZUAI's focus on advancing AI for global challenges and recognizing faculty contributions to research and education.
KAUST celebrated faculty promotions for 2016. The promotions were effective as of July 1, 2016, except where otherwise noted. The announcement was made by King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. Why it matters: This is a routine announcement of academic staff advancement at a leading GCC research university.
The article mentions several KAUST faculty and staff, including Matteo Parsani (Assistant Professor of Applied Mathematics), Teofilo Abrajano (Director of Sponsored Research), and David Keyes (Director of the Extreme Computing Research Center). It also references a talk by NASA Senior Scientist Mark Carpenter at the SIAM CSE 2017 conference. The article includes a photograph of King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. Why it matters: This appears to be general information about KAUST faculty and activities, but lacks specific details on research or AI developments.